I was recently appointed director of Manresa Retreat House in Victoria. Part of my job involves receiving and welcoming retreatants and guests. Most of them come from Malta. Almost without exception, the first words they utter as soon as they step in are, “How silent it is”, and they feel immediately relaxed.
I think the effect is like when you are sitting in a room and there is a refrigerator with its compressor humming. You would not notice it because you are used to it, but once the fridge reaches the desired temperature the compressor goes off and you become aware how much its hum was bothering you.
The hot summer months force us to slow our pace and distance ourselves from our deep immersion in the activities that continuously demand our attention and which, usually without our noticing, drain us of all energy. Our organism demands rest. We all do it in our own way. Some travel, some relax at home. The English are calling the latter, ‘staycation’.
Some seek rest through entertainment, often through noisy entertainment. We know how many young people come to Malta from abroad and spend most of their evenings in Paceville listening to loud music and drinking. They rest through ‘forgetting’. We adults too have our ways of ‘forgetting’.
‘Forgetting’ is not always wise. Actually, Freud says that the concept does not even exist and he opts for the term ‘repression’. We repress what causes us anxiety. Freud limits this to sexual and aggressive impulses but these are far from the only ones.
At least one other issue causes us anxiety, a question which haunts us without mercy and which we do our best to repress. It is the question of the meaning of our life: who am I? What am I doing here? Does my life make any sense at all? They are simple but frightening questions.
We try to bury them under noise and alienation but this would not kill them and they come back knocking on the lid of the coffin in which we thought we had interred them. They won’t leave us in peace before we have dealt with them.
The more courageous are not afraid to face these questions and, hence, are not afraid of silence and aloneness, because they are aware that only by facing these questions can they give meaning to their life and live it to its fullness.
The more we seek noise – and by noise I mean anything that alienates us – the more we experience emptiness. Unfortunately, this seems to be the way in which our culture is heading. We always seek the easiest way out, wrongly believing we are now totally free and little realising that free we are not because we are becoming a slave of our whims. Through reflection in silence we discover the often repressed spiritual dimension of life. A number of monasteries, often surrounded by wooded grounds and now void of monks, are offering visitors such a space, becoming oases of silence.
Many are realising they can live fully only through silence and contemplation, because life that is not been reflected upon is a life not lived
Many are realising they can live fully only through silence and contemplation, because life that is not been reflected upon is a life not lived. Such visitors would apparently be doing nothing; in reality they would be rebuilding themselves.